


Skull with a Burning Cigarette

by temporal-infidelity (Alvitr)



Series: Still Life [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cigarettes, Deleted Scenes, M/M, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Post-Deathly Hallows, Self-Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 22:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12567660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alvitr/pseuds/temporal-infidelity
Summary: Harry witnesses a moment that he wasn't meant to see.





	1. January 1996

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: Smoking is bad for your health, as is being a double (triple?) agent. Avoid both at all costs.

_Skull with a Burning Cigarette_ , Vincent Van Gogh (1886)

 

When Harry opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was for a moment. He lay in the bed, covered in sweat, tangled in the sheets, and listened to his own ragged breathing as he tried to get his wild heart under control. It was so dark in the room that when he raised one hand in front of his face, he couldn’t even see it. The only light, in fact, was a blurry sliver.

 

He pushed his damp, sweat-slicked hair away from his forehead and realized that the reason the light was blurry was because, of course, he was not wearing his glasses. As he fumbled around on the table beside him, flashes of the dream that he had just been wrenched from bubbled up to the surface of his mind, fleeting but terrifying all the same. Voldemort had been there, certainly; and Nagini. And someone else, someone familiar. At the thought of this shadowy figure, fresh fear filled him, but it had a different taste to his own fear; it was bitter, smoky, and deeply weary. He was not afraid of that familiar figure, but afraid for him.

 

The glasses slid onto his face, slightly crooked on his nose. He straightened them, and looked around, and felt silly. He was in his bedroom at Grimmauld Place, of course. He could see that now. The slight crevisse of light was coming in through a crack in the curtains the two pieces didn’t quite meet. It was so bright that it must be nearly a full moon. Now that his eyes were adjusted, he could see the contours of his bed and the other furniture in the room.

 

He sat up, and yawned. Downstairs he could hear voices, the creak and thud of people walking about. Was there an Order meeting? At this time of night? What time was it, anyway? He slid his feet out from under the covers and placed them on the floor, which felt blessedly cool. Reaching around on the table again, he found his wand and cast _lumos_. The clock said it was five in the morning; so not so late at night, at all, but very early in the morning. The light coming through the curtains must not be the moon after all, but the first glimmers of dawn.

 

Harry stood and stretched. He needed to use the loo. Opening the door to his room as quietly as he could, he tiptoed across the landing to the bathroom; did what he had to do, then just as soundlessly returned to the landing. He paused near the bannister. The noise of people had quietened. The meeting, if that’s what it had been, must be over; the sounds he’d heard were probably everyone leaving. He wondered what it had been about?

 

Suddenly he was desperately thirsty. He wondered if everyone was truly gone from downstairs; could he creep down to the kitchen and get a glass of water? After a long moment of listening for any sign of a presence, he decided to risk it. Anyway, this was his godfather’s house; he was allowed to go and get some bloody water if he wanted to, wasn’t he? Still, he felt a bit as if he were trespassing as he stole down the stairs, skipping the fourth and ninth ones because they always, without failed, creaked like a dying cat when you stepped on them.

 

The kitchen was indeed empty, but showed signs of recent habitation. Empty glasses, with traces of what smelled to him like liquor, were by the sink. Mrs. Weasley clearly hadn’t been at this meeting, or she would have done the washing up, he thought, and smiled. He opened the cabinet and removed another glass, then turned on the tap and filled it with cold water. He was so thirsty that he tipped it back and drank it all at once. Then, as he was bending over to fill it again, he glanced out the window over the sink -- and that’s when he saw Snape.

 

His potions professor was in the back garden, lit only by the stray glimmers of rising sun over the horizon, pacing back and forth. Harry watched him, frozen, for a moment. What was he still doing here, lurking around the grounds? Why hadn’t he returned to Hogwarts? What was he up to, anyway?

 

Harry put the glass he’d been drinking from on the counter. He felt for his wand, where he’d shoved it inside the waistband of his pajama bottoms. Then he turned and fled the kitchen. In the hallway by the front door, he found his trainers where he’d kicked them off, damp with snow and mud, last evening. He put them on over his bare feet, shivering a little bit at their coldness. Then he grabbed his jacket and pulled it on.

 

At the back door, he paused. What was he doing, exactly? Snape was a trusted member of the Order -- well, trusted by some, he supposed. He had a right to be here, as much as it begrudged him to admit it. But -- this was peculiar behavior without a doubt. He had to know what he was up to.

 

Carefully, he turned the doorknob and pulled it open, then slid through and immediately ducked down behind one of the bushes that bordered the house. To his great relief, Snape -- who was standing only ten or so feet away, near the far border of the garden -- had his back turned and didn’t seem to hear anything. Harry curled up in a ball, braced his back against the side of the house, and tried to be as still as possible.

 

Snape turned back towards the house, and walked aimlessly in that direction. He looked as though he were waiting for something -- or someone. When he reached the center of the garden, he sighed, then reached around inside his robe and removed something from an internal pocket. It took Harry a moment to recognize what it was, because it was simply so unexpected: a packet of cigarettes -- Lucky Strikes, to be exact. Snape slid one cigarette out of the packet with practiced ease and returned the rest to where it had come from; placed the single cigarette between his lips, cupped his hands around it and muttered something out of the corner of his mouth. A light flared between his fingers and he withdrew one of his hands, inhaling deeply, before taking the cigarette between two curled fingers and letting out a long breath, and with it, a stream of smoke.

 

Now Snape began to walk a circuit around the garden, punctuated with long draws on his cigarette, the embers glowing like a deep, red gem. He rolled his shoulders and sighed; looked at the horizon, cursed, and shook his head. He walked over to the stone wall that bordered the garden, leant his elbows on it, and hung his head. And then he was still, waiting.

 

Harry was nearly ready to fall alseep at this point, the sooty smell of cigarette smoke both disgusting and oddly comforting at the same time. And then the door next to him -- the one he had just quietly exited -- opened.

 

He almost shouted, but bit his lip in time, so hard that he tasted blood. A figure emerged from the house, shrouded in the darkness of the house’s shadow, and then stepped out into the garden. In the dim light of early morning, Harry quickly recognized him: it was Kingsley Shacklebolt.

 

Snape looked back, and also recognized him, but did not look as surprised as Harry felt. Still leaning on the stone wall, he turned away again and said, a little reproachfully, “You took long enough.”

 

Kingsley smiled. “Sorry. Albus had a lot to say on the matter.”

 

Snape snorted. “I’m sure he did.”

 

“It’s only because he cares, you know.”

 

“And he knows you know that I should know it, I’m sure.” What on earth did that mean, Harry wondered. Why couldn’t Snape just talk like everyone else?

 

Kingsley approached him, hands in his pocket. “Those’ll kill you one day,” he said. It took Harry a second to realize that he meant the cigarettes.

 

Snape chuckled darkly. “I should be so lucky.”

 

Reaching out one hand, Kingsley placed it, heavily, on Snape’s shoulder. Despite the lack of contact, there was something so weirdly intimate about the gesture that it made Harry’s face burn hot, and he wasn’t sure why. “None of that, now, Severus.”

 

Snape turned his head to one side, away from Kingsley. Harry could see his face very clearly at this angle. His eyes, dark as always, looked truly bottomless. Maybe it was just an effect of the light, but Harry thought they looked -- sad, almost. There were dark circles under his eyes, and Harry wondered when he’d last slept. Then he wondered why he cared. It was only that -- well, in this moment, Snape looked almost human. Living, breathing, exhausted, vulnerable. He looked like Harry felt nearly all the time.

 

But Snape closed his eyes, pushed away from the wall, and stubbed the cigarette he’d been smoking out into the stones. “There,” he said, and turned to face Kingsley. “Are you happy now?”

 

Kingsley grinned. “Not yet,” he said.

 

And then --

 

And then, Kingsley Shacklebolt leaned in and -- and _kissed_ Severus Snape, right on the lips.

 

Harry stared at them, those two interlocked mouths, as unlikely, it seemed to him, as Snape giving fifty points to Gryffindor. It could not be real. Perhaps this was another dream, and he’d never risen from his bed at all; or maybe he had in fact fallen asleep, crouched here in the bushes, and Snape was still pacing aimlessly around the courtyard, and everything else that had happened -- including this, especially this -- was a product of his own weird imagination. Severus Snape, the terrifying spectre he knew, could not possibly be kissing, with apparent abandon, fine, upstanding Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was kissing him back as though his life depended on it.

 

Harry blinked. He pinched himself profusely. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, and when he opened them, they were still standing there, in the dead, winter garden of Grimmauld Place as the sun rose, embracing. Their mouths had parted, at last, but their faces were still close, very close. Snape was saying something, so softly that Harry could barely pick up on it, but he thought it was something like, “And are you, now? Happy, I mean?” And Kingsley replied. “Yes.”

 

He took one of his Snape’s hands then, and shook his head. “But you -- you’re freezing. Like ice!”  


“It’s your fault. You’re the one who kept me waiting,” Snape replied archly.

 

“Well, then,” Kingsley said, and pressed his face close to Snape’s ear, and said something Harry couldn’t make out, but which made Snape smile, in a way he’d never thought Snape’s face was capable of -- a little shy, a little amused. He let his head fall forward and rest against Kingsley’s shoulder.

 

“All right, I suppose,” he said, and Kingsley laughed, full-throated, and wrapped an arm around Snape’s thin shoulders. He led him along the wall and through the gate towards the path beyond, that led along the side of the house, to the front garden. As they passed by the bushes, Kingsley turned his head and stared straight at the spot where Harry was hiding, and then, carefully, so that Snape wouldn’t notice, raised one finger to his lips and winked.

 

Harry, frozen with shock, waited as they disappeared around to the front of the house, until he heard the telltale _pop!_ of Apparition, signaling their exit. Then he let out a tremendous sigh of relief and relaxed, bonelessly, against the house. Instantly, he swore and stood up, brushing off the prickly brambles of the bushes he’d been hiding in. He fought his way out, then wandered over to the wall where Snape had been standing moments before. There was the cigarette, half-smoked and stubbed out, still giving off a whiff of nicotine. It was real. That had actually just happened. And he’d been seen -- though he hoped, based on Kingsley’s light-hearted wink, that Snape wouldn’t find out, or there would be hell to pay. As it was, just the thought of speaking to either of them made his face flame with embarrassment. Classes with Snape this spring would be awful -- and oh Merlin! Occlumency lessons! What if Snape saw that he had seen? He clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut, and willed the memory away, pushing it far into the back of his mind. He’d just die if Snape knew. He was positive. He could never know.


	2. January 2000

On a cold day in January, eighteen months after the defeat of Voldemort, Harry Potter opened the creaking gate of Hogwarts’ cemetary.

 

He’d been meaning to make this visit for awhile, but for some reason, he kept putting it off. He hadn’t been there for the funeral -- he’d been in hospital, fighting off his own demons. Hermione had gone for him.

 

“It was nice,” she’d told him afterwards. “There were a lot of people there -- all the faculty that could make it, and quite a lot more of the students than I expected.” She’d handed Harry a program. It was sparse, exactly as he would have wanted it, Harry supposed, but it had his name: Severus Tobias Snape, and below it, two dates, like bookends: 9 January, 1960 - 2 May, 1998.

 

He’d come across it again this weekend, as he was packing up some of his things at Grimmauld Place while on break from Auror training. It was tucked inside a copy of  _ Advanced Potions Making _ , fittingly, and had been living there since he’d finished his repeated seventh year, done largely by correspondence as they rebuilt Hogwarts. He’d realized, with shock, that that the ninth was just a few days away. 

 

And so here he was, on a bitterly cold and windy day, forty years after Severus Snape’s birth, visiting his grave.

 

He wandered the graves, noticing names that he recognized, friends and enemies who’d also died during the Battle of Hogwarts. As he reached the top of a slight hill, he looked up and saw that another person was here today, standing in front of a solitary grave towards the back of the cemetary.

 

Kingsley Shacklebolt.

 

It came back to him, then. He’d repressed it well, so worried he’d been that Snape would learn what he had seen, that he honestly had entirely forgotten it, even after everything that had happened. But now he remembered: a cold winter morning, right around this time of year, four years ago. Cigarette smoke rising in the early light. Snape’s feet crunching on the frozen grass as he paced.  _ I should be so lucky _ . Kingsley’s hand, a heavy but perhaps welcome weight on Snape’s shoulder. Their mouths, pressed together. The protective way Kingsley had wrapped his arm around Snape as they left. That knowing wink. The unspoken promise that had passed between him and Kingsley --  _ you say nothing, and I’ll say nothing _ . That crushed cigarette, the only evidence of what happened.

 

Harry realized that, as he had been remembering, he had continued to walk down the path towards that lonely grave at the back, and was nearly there. He cleared his throat, and Kingsley turned around.

 

“Ah,” said the newly elected Minister of Magic. “Harry Potter. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

 

“I didn’t expect to be here,” Harry said, a little stiffly. He stepped in place beside Kingsley. Sure enough, the grave he was standing in front of, as spare and neat as the funeral program had been, was Snape’s. 

 

“It’s good, though,” Kingsley said, his voice soft and scatchy in the silence of the cemetary. “It’s good you came.”

 

“I haven’t been before,” Harry said. “I never got to say … to say I’m sorry.”

 

Kingsley laughed a little. “Sorry for what?”

 

Harry shrugged. “For doubting him, I guess.”

 

“Harry,” Kingsley said, “you were meant to doubt him. We all were. If you hadn’t doubted him, he would have been highly offended, I’m sure.” He looked off into the distance. “Even I doubted him, and I had fooled myself into thinking I knew him better than most.”

 

He had a point. Harry smiled. “You’re right, of course.” But then he frowned. “But still …” Shaking his head, he closed his eyes. “You … you weren’t there. You didn’t see … it was awful. It was a terrible way for anyone to die. He didn’t deserve it.” He realized, a little to his horror, that he’d begun to tear up. He hadn’t known how strongly he felt about it, until he’d begun to speak about it. He thought of it again, the snake lunging at Snape, the horrible thudding sound his body made as it fell to the ground; his raspy, dying breaths. It was, he realized suddenly, a lot like his dream that night had been; the one that had woken him up in the first place, that had scared him so much but that he could scarcely remember.

 

Kingsley laid a hand on Harry’s back. “I’m glad you were there,” he said. Harry looked at him, then, and saw that the Minister’s eyes were damp. “I’m glad he wasn’t alone.”

 

Harry bit his lip. “I should have done something. If I’d had a bezoar … or if I knew more about healing …”

 

“It’s all right, Harry,” Kingsley said. “Sometimes terrible things happen, and there’s nothing we can do about them.”

 

Harry nodded. He knew this was true. But it didn’t feel any less awful. He wanted to ask Kingsley, then, about what he had seen that morning. What had he been to Snape, and what had Snape been to him? How had it ever happened, and how had it ended, as it must have, after the night that Snape killed Dumbledore? But his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and in his heart he knew that he couldn’t ask Kingsley that. It was still too fresh, even though it had been years ago.

 

Kingsley patted him on the back one last time, then reached inside the pocket of his coat. He pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes -- Lucky Strikes. At Harry’s look, he grinned a little. “It seemed more fitting than flowers.” He opened the packet, then offered it to Harry. After a moment’s hesitation, he fished one out. He rolled it around his fingers, feeling strange holding it, as Kingsley took out not one, but two. Then he closed the lid and leaned over, placing it on top of the grave. He put the two cigarettes in his mouth, and lit them with the same spell Snape had used; then he lit Harry’s with the fiery end of one of them. He placed the third cigarette on the gravestone, lit end poking out.

 

Harry took an experimental puff. It tasted awful, and he couldn’t stop himself from coughing. Kingsley laughed and patted him on the back again. “Bloody awful, aren’t they,” he said, but he seemed to handle his just fine. Harry imagined Snape smiling his funny, crooked half smile, the one he always made when he was about to say something truly sarcastic.  _ Hypocrite _ , he’d say to Kingsley; but perhaps with a little more fondness in his voice than Harry’d ever heard in it. 

 

Kingsley let out a long stream of smoke, tipping his head back. “To Severus Snape,” he said suddenly, “on his fortieth birthday. I hope you’re enjoying one of these, where ever you are, my friend.”

 

Harry took another puff, swallowed his cough, and blew the smoke as neatly as he could. He thought of trains, and platforms, and endless waiting, and hoped that Snape had found a good seat, by a window, and was safely at his destination -- one that he liked, perhaps, a bit more than the one he’d left. “To Severus Snape,” he echoed. “I wish you could have had a more peaceful death.” It sounded funny when he said it out loud, but he meant it, fervently. And Kingsley seemed to think it was the right thing to say. He grinned, and took another long drag, as if in agreement.

 

They stayed, and smoked until the cigarettes were little stubs, and then put them out, along with the one Kingsley had lit for Snape. 

 

“I’ll be back in May,” Kingsley said, as they headed back along the path. “Will I see you then?”

 

Harry thought for a minute, and nodded. Perhaps then he’d feel able to ask Kingsley more about Snape. And if not then, then maybe in a year, when January came around again, and frost lined the gravestones under a leaden sky once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The origin of this story is a scene I've had in my head for years now, of Harry hiding somewhere and watching Snape smoke and look human for once. I haven't read or written in the fandom in a long, long, long time, but I was lucky enough to get tickets for Cursed Child on Broadway and now I'm into all things Harry Potter again. I became possessed by this old idea, combined with one of my favorite rarepairs, and spent way too much time today trying to exorcise it from my mind, because Nanowrimo starts in two days and I have an actual project to do but ... hell, this was fun to write.


End file.
